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Using Symbols for Semantic Representations: A Pilot Study of Clinician Opinions of a Web 3.0 Medical Application

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Abstract

Medical information is presented to clinicians in many forms such as charts, graphs, and text messages. When analyzing symptoms, making diagnoses, or determining courses of action, there are many junctures in the process that are error prone or time consuming, which begs for improved user interfaces. We were interested in comparing a “widely used” medical display with an equivalent symbolic display based on cognitive and visual physiology to explore whether a set of principles could be applied to the symbolic system and render the clinical information effectively. We found evidence to support the notion that condensing contextualized information into symbols can convey objective semantics, improving display effectiveness, and facilitating clinical decision-making in terms of accuracy and time. The application was developed using key components from the Web 3.0 specifications, such as HTML5, social media interfaces, AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML)/JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and Web Services.

I would like to thank Dr. Michael F. Lesser, MD, for his assistance in the development of the semantic medical displays.

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Correspondence to Michael Workman PhD .

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Workman, M. (2016). Using Symbols for Semantic Representations: A Pilot Study of Clinician Opinions of a Web 3.0 Medical Application. In: Workman, M. (eds) Semantic Web. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16658-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16658-2_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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